In this webinar, we’ll describe how to setup a protection service catalog for any company and how easy EMC AppSync makes using snapshot and continuous data protection technology on a VNX storage array… As a bonus we will show a cool demo.

Webcast 2: Protecting Exchange from Disaster: The Choices and Consequences

In this demo, we’ll explore the 3 common Exchange DR options available to customers with an advanced storage array like an EMC VNX. One of the highlights is that I will be joined by independent Microsoft guru Brien Posey who has the low down on what’s new in Exchange 2013 related to storage and DR enhancements and describe how many things change in Exchange 2013 and how many things stay the same. Oh, of course we will have a cool demo for this one too!

BLOBs stored in SQL databases can be horrific. Oh, THOSE kind of BLOBs.

I was on a call with a customer this week who said they were reaching SharePoint content database file size limits (100GB) and they needed to get data out of SQL Server – bad.

But first let’s take a quick step back.

What is a BLOB? And What Is a Backronym?

A blob (alternately known as a binary large object, basic large object, BLOB, or BLOb) is a collection of binary data stored as a single entity in a database management system. Blobs are typically images, audio or other multimedia objects, though sometimes binary executable code is stored as a blob. Database support for blobs is not universal.

Blobs were originally just amorphous chunks of data invented by Jim Starkey at DEC, who describes them as “the thing that ate Cincinnati, Cleveland, or whatever”. Later, Terry McKiever, a marketing person for Apollo, felt that it needed to be an acronym and invented the backronym Basic Large Object. Then Informix invented an alternative backronym, Binary Large Object. [Wikipedia]

Problems with BLOBs?

Pushes content database file size limits to max (100GB)

Poor performance for large files, especially write intensive

Large file upload time

Can’t easily & economically scale

Poor asset utilization SQL Servers

Microsoft says BLOBs are bad:

“Typically, as much as 80 percent of data for an enterprise-scale deployment of SharePoint Foundation consists of file-based data streams that are stored as BLOB data. These BLOB objects comprise data associated with SharePoint files. However, maintaining large quantities of BLOB data in a SQL Server database is a suboptimal use of SQL Server resources. You can achieve equal benefit at lower cost with equivalent efficiency by using an external data store to contain BLOB data.” Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb802976.aspx

Up to 95% of your SharePoint (stored in SQL content databases) is a BLOB!

The Solution: Get BLOBs out of SQL

Keep the metadata in, and get the BLOBs out!

This solution we’ve designed is perfect for those of you in that situation who may be reaching SharePoint content database size limits or if you just want to run things better and more efficiently.

You can easily get 90% of SharePoint content data out of SQL Server and onto less expensive tiers of disk.

John Deluca from EMC tells the story of the Great Molasses Flood and the events leading up to this disaster and describes how this can be like many companies disaster recovery plans. Know anyone who is Painting The Tank Brown?

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Disclaimer

The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by EMC and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of EMC nor does it constitute any official communication of EMC.